CarsRus Australia is one of the many disruptive businesses that are using new technology to its full capacity. Dressed in their trademark polo shirts, Rossario Cosentino, founder of CarsRus Australia and Carissa Moretta, the Business Development Manager, are almost invisible. You would not pick them as the new breed of business people – tech savvy, experimental and young.

Like all entrepreneurs they are not afraid to give something a go. They are open to new ideas, and as such experimenting with social media is a part of their marketing and communications strategy. “Social media allows us to amplify our message, grow our community and interact with our tribe,” says Rossario .

It is not surprising that a modern communication tool such as social media, meets CarsRus, a thoroughly modern way of selling or buying a car. Don’t have time? Don’t know where to start? CarsRus is for you. They save you time, money and get you the best deal.

For CarsRus, Facebook is the most important social media platform. “We’re seeing positive results and we now know that our ideal clients use Facebook, so it allows us to get in front of and interact with the right people for a small investment,” says Carissa. Business is now a 24 hour job. With social media you are always ‘open for business’; it is constant and never ending. For CarsRus, it allows continuous connection with their tribe. As Carissa says, “Using Facebook (specifically) makes our business visible and alive 24/7.”

Social media is integrated into their business objectives. “By using Facebook we can actually talk to people that are interested in what we have to say and can benefit from using our services. Facebook is, for 80% of our customers, the introduction to our business, our services, our team and our values. It helps lead our hungry crowd to our website to learn more about how we can provide solutions to their problems,” says Rossario .

Offline platforms are “outdated” and “old school” for CarsRus. “It doesn’t provide a return on investment for us. Online platforms allow us to reach more of the right people who really need and value our services,” says Carissa. She continues, “While online platforms are more successful by way of attracting customers in volume, our offline referral partners make it much easier to convert leads into sales because the potential client already feels like know us and can trust us because of that introduction referral. We do also utilise our strategic partners as well as harness the power of networking, as they both generate very warm leads and referrals for us.”

In future, they will be using more of YouTube, “due to the great response it is having for us,” says Rossario. “We believe that it’s very important to test platforms in a lean way to see if it works for your business and speaks to your target audience. The platforms that do work well, should all be connected to each other and should definitely lead to the business’ website.”

CarsRus have also dabbled in social media advertising. “It can be great because you can get yourself out there to hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of people for a small price,” says Carissa. She continues, however, “You really need to carefully target the people that you are trying to attract and avoid getting distracted by advertising to the mass market, like radio advertising can do for example. For us, social media advertising provides a return on investment because we use specific demographic and interests targeting things such as: location, age, gender, marital status, income and even how many children they have. It’s scary how much these platforms know about us as individual users, but it’s powerful for businesses because it allows us to get our services in front of people who might actually be looking for solutions to the problems that they’re facing.”

Rossario concludes, “We’re not “social media” experts, but if you test and measure, you will be able to find out which platforms work well and don’t work well for your business. We’ve learned that if you’re trying to be everything to everyone you will become nothing to no one.” And his final words are relevant to all businesses that want to experiment with social communication tools.

About the Author

Anna Cairo is the founder and Director of Anna Cairo Consulting, a boutique communications consultancy with its core focus on the disruptive social media and communication space. She has a passion for educating businesses, executives and leaders about the fragmentation of communication and its impacts on business as well as social media its risks and opportunities in the workplace. More from this author »